From the co-director of The Witcher 3, and many other CD Projekt Red veterans, comes a brand new action role-player that turns you into a vampire in medieval Europe.
The Middle Ages are currently having a moment of unusual popularity, as a setting for video games. From Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 to Pentiment and Crusader Kings 3, and most recently, Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy, are all set in Europe during its Black Death ridden pre-Renaissance period. It’s an era that covers 1,000 years, so there’s quite a bit to work with, but the biggest question seems to be whether to rely on history or add a fresh sprinkling of supernatural shenanigans.
Most of the above stick to realism, but third person action role-player, The Blood of Dawnwalker, set ‘somewhere in the Carpathians’ – a mountain range that traverses the Transylvanian Plateau – is definitely not one of them. It blends medieval history with vrakhiri, its brand of politically organised vampires. Having manoeuvred themselves into position as the region’s social elites, they’re able to farm humans for blood, living the immortal parasitic equivalent of the good life.
The operation’s run by autocorrect-defying villain, Knyaz Brencis, who’s become the area’s leader and is in the process of arranging a grand coronation for himself. As part of that celebration, many humans will be drained of their blood by his cohort, as they revel into the night. Unfortunately for you, that includes your family, who are kidnapped by Brencis at the beginning of the game, and held in a dungeon ready to join the drinks service.
You play Coen, a lowly villager whose life has been upended, not only by your family’s abduction and imminent murder in the name of undead nutrition, but by the fact that you have been bitten and afflicted with the curse of vampirism. The twist is that unlike almost all vrakhiri, you’ve become a Dawnwalker, a rare breed that can survive sunlight, turning back into a conventional human at sunrise before returning to your vampire form each night.
It’s an excuse for the game to give you two competing sets of powers. By night you can top up your health by draining the blood of guards, villagers or, in a pinch, rats and woodland creatures. You can also ‘shadowstep’ several metres, reaching high walls or balconies and outflanking enemies in fights, in a move similar to Dishonored’s key traversal technique, the Blink, albeit not quite as well implemented.
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You also have a growing raft of special moves, each of which comes with a lengthy cooldown, encouraging you to use the full panoply of powers rather than spamming a single favourite. By day you’re far from helpless though, with a range of completely separate witchcraft powers to help mow down assailants. Like the vampire abilities, they devour a bit of your own health with each use, which at the start of the game, with your sliver of health bar, is a significant handicap.
It’s not the only one. The Blood Of Dawnwalker employs a novel approach to combat and until you’ve committed it to muscle memory, even minor encounters prove brutally challenging. Every one of its strikes and blocks comes with a direction, so each attack by an enemy can be perfectly parried provided you match the angle of the incoming blow. Fail to do that and you can still block, but at a cost of stamina.
Stamina governs your ability to take any action in fights, with dodges and attacks using a chunk of it, while backing steadily away gives it time to recharge. The problem is, the game loves flinging numerous attackers at you, making it hard to gain any distance when you need a respite mid-battle. It means you’re continually juggling Coen’s stamina with the need to block incoming blows from multiple angles, while desperately trying to find windows to strike back.
These early fights can be unforgiving. Before you’ve even really figured out what you’re doing, and with almost no special moves or upgrades, you’re expected to take on large groups of heavily armoured guards. In these engagements a couple of minor mistakes can cause a cascading effect that gets you killed. That’s par for the course in many action games, but when you’ve spent 10 painstaking minutes whittling down a courtyard full of assailants, only to miss a block and have to start all over again, it can get dispiriting.
Fortunately, that sensation doesn’t last long. As you get to know the controls, bulk up health and stamina, and add more lethal abilities, combat changes from frightening drudge to something far more stylish and engaging. As is traditional, perfectly blocking an enemy attack leaves them momentarily stunned, opening them up for all sorts of limb and head lopping finishers.
With more health and ways of recharging it, magical attacks become less onerous, with healing built into many attacks and abilities. You’ll also find yourself pulling off long combos of directional blocks and strikes, which feel genuinely skilful rather than simply adding perks from skill trees, although that does also pull a lot of weight. The result is that fights get both easier and more rewarding as you progress.
That’s just as well, because Bencis’ coronation is due to take place in 30 days, giving you exactly that long to become powerful enough to take him on. At the beginning of the game the idea of someone as feeble as Coen walking into a castle’s dungeons and rescuing his family is a laughable prospect. Your progress through the game changes that, and how you go about it is entirely up to you.
After the prologue you’re left to your own devices, in a decent sized swathe of Eastern Europe, whose countryside is immediately reminiscent of The Witcher 3 (not surprising given that developer Rebel Wolves was founded by former CD Projekt Red staff). Days and nights are divided into eight time segments apiece, and completing activities use up a certain number of them, with most objectives on the map only accessible during either daylight or darkness, matching Coen’s powers that change automatically at dawn and dusk.
